The men that went away on passes, the MPs went around and picked them up and brought them back to barracks. Chuck Grant was taken off the street in London and had to jump in. One of the few men who made a jump into Belgium. The ones that got picked up by the MPs while on pass, all they had was their dress uniforms. It was one big mess. They just wanted to get the troops in.
We weren’t briefed. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. Even the generals didn’t know. All we knew was the Germans launched a surprise offensive in the Ardennes forest in Belgium, on the border of Germany. We got little bits of information, took us a week to figure out what was going on. The Germans were trying to secure Antwerp before Allied troops got there. Everyone wanted Antwerp. The Germans wanted it, the Allies wanted it. It had a big seaport into Germany, and the Germans were advancing with tanks through the Ardennes to get there. They needed the roads. The 101st was going to defend the town of Bastogne—it had seven crossroads the Germans needed. We had to put a perimeter defense around it and block the Germans from getting through at all costs.
My leg was still kind of weak, but I never gave it a thought. I didn’t feel my leg. Some people can’t stand pain. Pain doesn’t bother me one damn bit. If there was pain, I didn’t feel it. That’s my nature. If I get a headache, I bang my head against the wall, curse somebody, and it goes away bing-bang-boom! I just ignore it. Once you’re thrown out on the front lines, you don’t pay attention to your body. You get stronger and stronger.
BABE
They had a church service before the trucks came in to get us. The priest from the 501 was saying mass, his name was Father Sampson. He was a jolly Roman Catholic priest; we admired him like we did Father Maloney. We felt the chaplains were, like the medics, the real heroes. Father Sampson was captured in Normandy and released. We didn’t know it then, but he would be captured and held prisoner for months in Bastogne, too. He wrote about it in his book Look Out Below!
He looked us all over, and seeing more of us than usual at Mass, and not just the usual suspects, he said, “Look how many men we got here, what’s going on? We going up again? It’s the only time I see all you guys.” He said Mass, and as I was kneeling, I looked over and right next to me was Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, the division artillery commander. I thought, I’ll never be this close to an Army general again. I was pretty excited about it. I didn’t know then he would later be famous all over the world for saying “Nuts!” at Bastogne.
At about two or three in the morning, we boarded the trucks. All we had were regular fatigue clothes on, we had no combat gear, no winter gear, no winter underwear; they sent us up as we were. No supplies, no ammo. In my squad we dug up two boxes of 30 caliber, I had one and Mike McMann had one. I don’t know who else had one. Everybody was hollering for rifle ammo, carbine ammo. It was a sad affair.
We went up on trailers, and as we drove up, it rained, it snowed, and these trailers were like boxcars, open on the top, no shelter, and it’s December, and it’s Belgium’s coldest winter in thirty years. We didn’t know that at the time, we just knew it was cold. So we were wet and cold to start with. But we didn’t worry about it. We were tough. We were kids. My only thought was about what the hell we were getting ready to do. Nobody knew.
7
BASTOGNE: CODE WORD FOR HELL
Winter 1944
(Bill’s Stories in Italics)
The Red Ball Express drivers drove us to an area just outside Bastogne, Belgium. Joe Toye and I were up front with the machine gun. The driver was a black man from Philly, so we chatted with him a little bit. You could see and hear the shelling in the background, it started out faint and got louder and louder as we got closer. Our driver was getting pretty shaken up. We moved along at about forty miles per hour in the pitch dark, and every blast we heard, he would say nervously, “That’s theirs!” He knew what we were heading into, and wanted to drop us off and get the hell out. A couple of shells hit a hundred yards to the right of our trucks, and the recoil of German artillery was lighting up the sky. Light travels faster than sound, so the sky lights up, then you hear them coming over your head. By the time you hear them it’s too late to do anything about it. We had to keep moving in a straight line, even if shells fell around us. When we got as close as we could, the trucks stopped, dropped us off, and took off. I give the drivers a lot of credit, because they got us where we needed to go.
The Army was segregated, the time dictated that, and blacks were usually put in transportation jobs. Everything we got was through them—equipment, ammo, supplies, food. It was a team effort, that’s a fact. Without everyone doing their part, we wouldn’t have won the war. There were some black soldiers at the Bulge, but they weren’t paratroopers. They were tankers or infantry. I never saw them.
The broads had important jobs in the war, too. Lots of women took part. The British had the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service). We had the WACS (Women’s Army Corps) and the WASPs (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots). Whenever a plane was finished for the war, the girls delivered them to the military bases in a hurry. They were fly girls. They flew bombers, those broads.
We got off the trucks and fell into our columns. We didn’t try and bunch up, and we didn’t walk slow, we walked double-time. The quickstep. You follow whoever is up front telling you where to go. If he’s doing eight steps a minute, you do eight steps a minute. We had to get to wherever we were setting up a main line of resistance (MLR). No one seemed to know what we were supposed to be doing.
There was a major battle going on nearby. Lot of shelling. As we advanced, infantry troops were running toward us, scared as can be. We’re going forward, they’re running back. A lieutenant named Rice, I don’t know where he was from, he was stopping these kids, making them pile their weapons, clothes, ammo in one big pile. They threw their stuff down and ran. The pile was getting bigger and bigger, so as we walked past, we fished through it and grabbed whatever we could carry. First thing I grabbed was ammo. You tried to load up on guns, ammo, and grenades. Food and clothes were secondary. When your hands were full, you threw what ammo you found in someone else’s hands.
Bill said, “Look at the patch, 28th Division.” I’m telling you I never seen men with a look like that in my life, running, scared to death. No helmets, no weapons. They threw their guns down, they threw their bandoleers down, they threw everything down. The kids were all out of breath, yelling, “Don’t go up there, there are so many Germans, they’re gonna kill everybody!” We said, “That’s our job!” They said, “But there’s a million of them!”
I stopped one of the fellas—he was an artillery man—I said, “What the hell outfit you in?” He mentioned some artillery. I said, “Jesus, I hope you at least lowered your gun and blew them.” He said, “No, we didn’t have time.” I said, “Oh my God.” Bill would have said—any of our leaders would have said—“Stand your ground!” That’s what would have prevailed in our company. We were more ashamed than anything else. These were American soldiers.
We walked through the town of Bastogne; it was a sad sight, a beautiful town in shambles, just destroyed. We went about a mile and a half outside Bastogne and set up our MLR. The town had a railroad running through and was a crossroads, seven roads ran through the middle of town. They would have made the German advance much faster, trying to get to the seaport in Antwerp. The Germans and the Americans wanted that seaport. We had to set up a perimeter defense, surround Bastogne in a circle, and hold it. This was nothing like France or Holland. In France we were on the move. In Holland, we were all spread out. In Bastogne, the company was all together in one place. Our job was to hold the line and try to stay alive.
When we got to our position in the Bois Jacques woods, that was kind of a safe haven for a little while. You could see they had a hell of a fight there. The ground had craters from the 88s, shell cases and tree branches all over, dead GIs, and limbs—an arm here, a leg there, blood and guts. That was Bastogne, kid. Ain’t no damn picnic. We knew trouble was coming. Luckily,
it was quiet while we set up a permanent defense. We dug our foxholes about thirty to forty feet into the woods, put out outposts just behind the front of the woods, Winters set up headquarters behind us. The 501st was on our right flank. We had an artillery battalion and an armored division with us. The 10th Armored’s Team Cherry and Team Desiree were in Bastogne before we got there and got surrounded with us. Thank God they did because we needed them. Otherwise, we didn’t have much contact with the other regiments and divisions that were out there. We were all spread out, a lot of ground to cover. No one knew what was going on that first day; we were sent to see what’s cooking, and patrols were sent out all over the place. You could have been on a patrol and not even known it. Everything was just chaos.
Our medics, Gene Roe and Ralph Spina were low on medical supplies, and Ralph—he was also from South Philly—and I went back to the town of Bastogne to see what we could find. Ralph got some supplies at the aid station, but everyone was low; the Germans had captured the 101st Division’s medical company on their way into Bastogne. We lost most of our doctors, aids, and supplies. That was certainly a blow to the division.
Ralph and I took advantage of being off the line for a few minutes and stopped to eat the only hot meal we would have in over a month. It was getting dark, and we were freezing, so I suggested we try a shortcut through the woods. We were trying to figure out where the hell we were when suddenly I fell into a hole. A voice yelled out from under me, “Hinkle, Hinkle, ist das du?” I scrambled out of that foxhole and yelled, “Hinkle your ass, Kraut!” and ran. Thank God it was dark or he probably would have got a shot off. I found Ralph and we found our way back to the line. Ralph liked to remind me of that incident often. He’d say, “Hey Babe, how’s Hinkle?” Or “Have you seen Hinkle lately?” I wonder if Hinkle ever did make it back to his foxhole.
For a few days, we kept up constant patrols. Everybody in every company and every outfit had patrols out. The 501st, 502nd, everyone. You know what I say—just don’t volunteer! The Germans were patrolling, too. Whenever the Germans fired on us, we fired back. Whatever they gave us, we gave back. Machine-gun fire, artillery fire, mortars. Don’t forget, we were low on ammo. We were low on everything. We had to conserve, so we couldn’t go crazy, or we’d be like sitting ducks. Dead. The Germans didn’t know what we had, so that saved us.
I was in a foxhole with Buck Compton. Our foxhole was like the Platoon CP. I was the sergeant, and he was the boss, he was my lieutenant, so anything that had to do with the action up front started from our foxhole. He was in command—if something happened to him, I was the boss. We had phones to the guys on outpost, and they’d report to us what was going on. They’d tell us if it was quiet, or they saw something, and we’d dispatch orders. One of us watched the phones while the other slept. Whatever was going on, we were in contact with Captain Dike, Foxhole Norman. He wasn’t worth the room he took up.
It would be quiet, and then a quick firefight, and you’d hear the men in the woods screaming and hollering for medics, and that’s how it went for a few days. When it got quiet, we’d wait for the Germans to shell us again. They had Screaming Mimis, too, six rockets together, they’d shoot it and it screamed so loud it pierced your ears. Nothing you could do but sit there and take it. They kept probing and pushing. They’d fire at us, shell us, and try to break us down. Like a boxer, they’d jab, jab, jab, and hope to find a weak spot so they can hit you with a haymaker. You hope every line is secure, that’s all. You have no idea where they’re going to hit next. We had to be sparing, so a lot of the time, we sat there and took it. We still killed more krauts than they got of us.
We couldn’t appreciate the lulls in the fire, because we were freezing our skidonies off. It was snowing, it was minus five degrees, we were sitting in an icy foxhole, like being in a freezer, with no winter clothes—no long underwear, no warm socks, no overcoats, no blankets, nothing. We looked like shivering, homeless ragamuffins. The Germans had long wool coats on, and winter boots; they were ready for the cold. But even if we piled on winter clothes, we still would have froze. A few of the guys got hold of winter coats before we left, I think Bain and Malarkey had wool coats and hats, and they still froze. Never been that goddamn cold in my life. Belgium’s coldest winter in thirty years. How’s that for luck? The only way to describe it is tell you to go outside in your pajamas, in a snowstorm, in wind and subzero temperatures, and once you get nice and wet, stay there for a week. There was nothing you could do to get warm. Nothing. At home you go inside to get warm, and you go out again. We didn’t have anyplace to go into. When it got quiet for a little while, you got out of your foxhole and moved around. That’s how you got warm, by going outside.
The sergeants were in charge of waking the guys up and getting them to outpost. We switched up every two hours. Getting to outpost was a little eerie. You’re out there all by yourself. You never knew if you’d get there alive, or if the men on outpost were alive. Germans would sneak up on the guys and capture them. There was heavy fog at night and in the morning. Add that to the rain and snow, and you couldn’t see two feet in front of you. You had your gun ready, and you listened first, and tried to see the outline of the helmets and clothes, see if it’s your own guys, before going in.
The Germans had the high ground. There were hills all around Bastogne. We were on a hill, but they were higher than us because a lot of them were positioned in homes and a church. They were in the town of Foy, no farther than three hundred to four hundred yards away from the wooded area that we occupied, about four football fields away. That’s another reason when you had outpost, you were so glad to see the guys there and alive. We had to send outposts to lie outside Foy all night. Chuck Grant had his squad out there every night watching everything. Then we had our outposts about forty feet in back of them, then you had another outpost behind that one, then the woods where the men tried to get some sleep. If outpost heard something, they opened fire, and you heard it and got the hell up. All you had to do was hear fire. The guys that were in the woods had to come out and hold them off.
You took the heaviest weapon in the platoon on outpost, a light 30. We also had the 60mm mortar, but you used the 30 to repulse any German attack, even though it couldn’t do much against tanks. Sometimes Chuck’s squad came running back and we’d say, “What the hell’s the matter with them guys, they’re coming back?” and we found out they encountered a German patrol with more firepower. Then we had to stand our ground with our guns, and wait for an attack, and usually, luckily there was no attack coming.
We didn’t get much sleep. The Germans liked to shell the woods with mortars at night. The more men we lost, the less we slept. We started with two men on, four men off; then went to two on, two off; then one on, one off; then you’re never getting any rest, you’re at it all the time. We were so tired, guys would fall asleep walking. The guy in front of you would drop his rifle, and you’d see he was asleep.
You got so tired you didn’t know what the hell was going on. No sleep and constant stress. Joe Toye tried to lighten it up, singing all the time like he did in Holland. Same song, too—“I’ll Be Seeing You.” We had no entertainment, so he sounded good to me.
If Joe was singing or anyone else was singing, it meant we were okay, so you felt good about that. But some men couldn’t carry a tune. That includes Bill. The worst singer up in the Bulge was Ralph Spina. He couldn’t sing a note. He sang like South Philly Willy. He thought he was Mario Lanza. He said, “Well, I come from his neighborhood.” I said, “Well, you ain’t got his voice!” When he started to sing we all yelled, “Will you shut the hell up!”
It didn’t take the Germans long to figure out what was going on—that we surrounded the town—and they started hitting our defensive perimeter from all sides. They pushed so far into Allied lines, they created a bulge in the line, that’s why they call it the Battle of the Bulge. A couple days in, we had a foot of snow, the wind kicked up, we were freezing our cods off, we were running out of food
, and the krauts had the entire 101st Division surrounded. It happened so quick, no one knew what was going on. The generals didn’t even know. We knew we were surrounded because we saw the antiaircraft gun the Germans use, we saw it on all four sides of us. They fired at any Allied planes or pursuit planes they saw. You could tell we were in trouble, getting fire from every direction. You couldn’t miss it.
We were dug in a circle and that’s where we were staying, hell or high water. Just don’t let them break through, was all that was on our minds. Paratroopers are used to having front lines facing every direction—east, west, north, south, so it was nothing new. We said, “They got us surrounded, the poor bastards!” Those krauts didn’t know who they were dealing with.
One day Ralph Spina and I were sitting in a tree trunk that had been blown down by artillery fire. We were talking about home when we heard Bill arguing with a second lieutenant who had just joined the platoon from West Point. The lieutenant was looking for volunteers for a patrol on the other side of a hill, and Bill, who was much more experienced in combat, was arguing that no patrol was needed because they already knew the German position. The lieutenant kept on it and found seven volunteers to go with him. Of course, they were replacements. When the patrol returned later that night, two of the men were dead and one had his hand torn apart. The lieutenant apologized to Bill for not listening to the more experienced soldier, but it was too late for those kids who trusted him. We saw most of the West Pointers as cocky and not into combat. They were military-career types more than they were soldiers, and the actions they took seemed to be about earning promotions, not for the sake of winning the war or keeping their men safe. There were the exceptions of course. Some great soldiers came from West Point, but we always mistrusted them until they proved otherwise. This West Pointer wasn’t well liked in the platoon after that incident.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 16